Umicor, a materials manufacturer for clean technologies, built their new offices in the middle of their manufacturing campus which is part of a much larger industrial park in Hoboken, Belgium. The design by Conix Architectsis intended to integrate the plant better with its surroundings, adding a fresh scale and materiality to the site and create a sense of place amongst the brick industrial buildings. The project is also a retrofit of a mid-century 8 story brick office, with a fresh wing unrolling from one end, an interesting design narrative connecting with the plant’s mission to recycle and reclaim raw materials. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects at Manuel Ocaña Architecture and Thought Production Office were asked to design a rather unusual spatial concept, one that would ensure the survival of 20 families and thousands of books for three years after the 2012 Apocalypse. The design was commissioned and promoted by a Belgian foundation and would be located at a mountain slope in Sierra Nevada, Spain. It is conceived as a “culture ark”, after a suddenly precipitated climate change with tsunamis, earthquakes, and a global chain of disasters, nuclear or otherwise.

The initial idea for the project was to use a more organic approach of atomization and circulation strategies. Several dome-shaped areas are interconnected and manifest the underground configuration of the system upon the landscape. In the light of ever-rising number of religious beliefs and, as the architects put it, “the “scientificisim” religious looking for immortality”, the project can also function as an Apocalyptic Resort. Read the rest of this entry »

Winning the Hong Kong Alternative Car Park Tower Competition, the proposal attempts to integrate the Hong Kong City hall, the second-floor pedestrian system and the streets on the second floor. It provides a network of public spaces with atriums and multifunctional areas placed at the top floor, along with great views of the Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. Designed by Mozhao Studio, the Car Park Tower is a public building, transforming the typical parking facility into an urban landmark. Read the rest of this entry »

The building is located in a densely populated residential part of Mumbai, with hight desity ranging from 7 to 15 stories. This height regulation governs the development of the entire neighborhood, including the school site. In order to create privacy in the school spaces and make the building more efficient, designers at Sanjay Puri Architects introduced a second skin of hexagonal modules encompassing the entire building. The modules have small openings on the southern side to reduce heat gain into the building while providing cross ventilation since the sun during most of the year is on the southern side in this location while southwest breeze blows throughout the year. Towards the northern side, with indirect sunlight, the hexagons are like truncated pipes moving in and out and creating additional usable spaces for sitting, playing or reading as extensions to the open spaces on each floor. Read the rest of this entry »

Pin-plant is an installation designed by Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer from Design With Companylike a series of experiments – an examination and interpretation of humanity through anthropomorphism and color. Finding the fantastic in the systematic. What do our desires to personify computer parts express about us? It all began with an old computer motherboard. At first it was a city scape, then a vast mechanical microcosm, with circuits leading this way and that- a garden of forking paths if you may- immediately immense and endless. Aggregating in intense exchanges of information- where color became landmark and organization revealed a scale of part to whole most basic in its arrangement, yet complex in possibility. It’s efficiency a testament to its time. Technology of foreign pieces. But what did we want to do with it? We wanted to give it life to understand it. Aestheticize it until it could be more than a commentary on the mechanics of things. Through sculpture, the conventional exformative connections are disconnected. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Two Towers” proposal by Saraiva + Associados in partnership with IDU (International Design Union) and Tianhua aims to resolve in an equal form all the variables in this intervention, creating a strong landmark building that is generous and practical in is form and that can fully embodies modernity, strength, development and eco-friendly. The main idea was to give the two towers a strong sense of responsibility and a modern language – both financial institutions well differentiated yet sharing a common global image.

Sitting in the CBD and administrative/cultural center of Shenzhen, this project reflects the study of the city’s history, geography and ecology in an integrated development, respecting both urban planning and the stipulated program. As a response, the design reunites two different buildings that would combine into one unique and harmonic force, materialized in an architectural built mass that is fragmented into several blocks. These combined groups of blocks arise from the podium, the strongest piece that connects the buildings to the ground and surrounding environment. Furthermore, the external square highlights the unique entrance to a main, shared, lobby that will then connect to two different lobbies for each company.

Its exterior image follows the idea of a modern, sober and contemporary group of buildings with ample glazed surfaces, interspersed with mesh elements, in a balanced composition of volumes and surfaces. Read the rest of this entry »